


That means we're inconsolable

by givebackmylifecas



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Nairobi lives, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:28:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25115410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/givebackmylifecas/pseuds/givebackmylifecas
Summary: How Palermo laughed, how Palermo cried, how he ranted and raved, how he enjoyed being kissed on the neck but pretended not, how proud he was of the plan he conceived with Berlin. Helsinki seems to remember all this at once.
Relationships: Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa/Palermo | Martín Berrote, Helsinki | Mirko Dragic/Palermo | Martín Berrote
Comments: 47
Kudos: 95





	That means we're inconsolable

**Author's Note:**

> TWs for major character death, minor character death, non graphic descriptions of those deaths, swearing
> 
> Title from the Richard Siken poem "Scheherazade"

Helsinki remembers the first time he saw Palermo, when the Professor brought him to the house they were staying in before they all set off for the monastery together. Remembers immediately being taken, by his confidence, his intelligence – and admittedly also his looks.

He remembers how brazenly Palermo had flirted with him in front of the rest of the gang, his eyes at once innocent and promising as he offered to tame Helsinki’s bear.

He remembers how the edges of Palermo’s sharp, abrasive personality softened just a little when they slept together, how he asked Helsinki to be rougher, but melted into the tender touches against his own will.

He remembers the jokes, the teasing in the weeks leading up to the heist. How honoured he felt to be the one Palermo laughed with instead of laughed at, how he realised that what he was being offered was something precious, that no one else – especially the other gang members could see let alone understand.

He remembers the way Martín shook in his arms when he stopped him from leaving the bank, how he begged Helsinki not to tie him up with the hostages because Gandia was surely going to come for him first.

He remembers scoffing at the idea – despite his poor eyesight, Palermo was still a legitimate threat, not someone Gandia would risk coming after should he escape.

How Palermo laughed, how Palermo cried, how he ranted and raved, how he enjoyed being kissed on the neck but pretended not, how proud he was of the plan he conceived with Berlin. Helsinki seems to remember all this at once as Gandia’s bullet goes straight through Palermo’s head. Palermo’s knees buckle and he falls to the ground, a hole in his head, his heart stopped, ears oblivious to the way Helsinki and the others scream his name.

Helsinki fires his gun without thinking, sending bullet after bullet towards Gandia, but the man still escapes. Denver runs after him, a grenade in his hand, but Helsinki’s eyes are drawn to the man lying dead on the floor in front of him.

He drops his gun, falling to the ground next to Palermo. His hands almost of their own accord, search for a way to help, to put his medical training to some use. But there’s nothing. No wounds to stitch up, no flowing blood to staunch, no bones to set. His hands rest on Palermo’s chest and feel nothing, no beating heart and no lungs expanding with breath.

Palermo’s eyes, still bloodshot from the glass Tokyo had painstakingly removed, are wide open, staring up at nothing. Helsinki doesn’t want to uncurl his fingers from where they’ve hooked themselves in the front of Palermo’s jumpsuit, wants to maintain the contact for just a little longer, before he goes cold and stops looking like himself and starts looking like a corpse that used to be Palermo.

There are hands on his shoulder and he turns his head to see Nairobi, carefully kneeling next to him. She wraps her arms around him and Helsinki finally lets go of Palermo to curl into her embrace.

There’s an explosion from somewhere deeper in the building and then there are footsteps. Helsinki looks up expectantly to see Denver returning, head hung.

“He got away,” Denver confesses, letting Stockholm pull him into a hug.

“I don’t understand,” Nairobi whispers. “How did we let this happen?”

Helsinki shakes his head. He’s never considered himself good with words but now they seem further away than usual. Escaping his grasp as he replays the last ten minutes in his mind, wondering how they went from rescuing Nairobi, to Gandia pointing his gun at the last second and shooting Palermo where he stood.

“We,” Stockholm starts and then her voice cracks and she has to stop and wipe at her eyes. “We should move him,” she tries again. “He shouldn’t be on the floor.”

Denver steps forward, gesturing to Rio. “Come on, both of us should be able to manage.”

“No,” Helsinki says when Rio nods and moves towards Palermo. “I’ll do it.”

Nairobi rubs a hand down his back. “Helsi, you don’t have to.”

“It’s okay,” Helsinki assures her, even though nothing really is. “I want to do it.”

He shrugs out of her grip and slides his arms under Palermo’s back and knees, lifting him to his chest. It’s wrong, how Palermo’s body reacts to his touch, because it doesn’t. It’s like carrying a rag doll and as he gets to his feet, his strength nearly fails him as the realisation washes over him again that Palermo is gone.

He follows Nairobi up the stairs and into one of the offices where they lay Palermo’s body out on the aged leather couch.

He wants to stay with him, just for a moment, but then Denver is running into the room, saying that the Professor is on the radio and he’s going to get Tokyo away from Gandia and Lisbon back from the police.

* * *

The plan works, Helsinki doesn’t know how it works, but it does. They rescue Tokyo, they get Gandia to cooperate and then there’s blanks being fired and a helicopter hovering above the roof. Helsinki can’t really see what’s going on outside, there’s smoke everywhere and Tokyo is in the doorway firing at the police snipers, blocking most of his view anyway.

He focusses on doing his job which is guarding Gandia. When the man makes to escape, Helsinki takes great satisfaction in smashing his head against the handrail, watching him crumple to the ground. He exchanges a look with Bogota, which tells him the other man knows exactly what he’s feeling.

Helsinki regrets never asking Palermo how he met Marseille and Bogota – but he knew it had something to do with Berlin, a topic Palermo avoided like the plague.

There are boot-steps on the roof, coming towards the door and then Tokyo is back inside, Denver, Rio, and Stockholm following. There are two people dressed in black tactical gear behind them and Helsinki wonders if there was a change of plan and Marseille came with Lisbon.

The shorter of the two figures pulls off their helmet and hood, and relief floods Helsinki to see Lisbon safe and whole – she is just as much of a leader as the Professor, something they desperately need now that… Now they're without Palermo.

The second person removes their hood and there’s gasps as Berlin, looking incredibly alive, grins at them.

“Surprise?” he says and then Denver and Nairobi are simultaneously pouncing on him.

Bogota and Tokyo both hug Berlin, one after the other and then Helsinki shakes his hand.

Berlin smiles at them, his face familiar, but more tired than Helsinki remembers, even from the last heist.

“Where’s Martín?” he asks and Helsinki hates that this is the first time he’s heard Palermo’s real name. When no one answers, Berlin rolls his eyes. “I’m sorry, Palermo is what he called himself, right? Where’s Palermo? Off terrorising the hostages?”

Lisbon smiles too and there’s a lump in Helsinki’s throat that won’t go away.

“Berlin, Lisbon,” Nairobi says softly, looking between the two of them. “We thought you knew.”

“Knew what?” Lisbon asks, her eyes narrowing dangerously.

“He’s dead,” Bogota says bluntly, the only one brave enough to look Berlin in the eye.

Lisbon gasps and Stockholm hugs her. Berlin remains silent, almost completely still, his eyes flitting between the rest of the gang as if waiting for one of them to say it’s all a big joke.

“Where is he?” Berlin asks finally, eyes dark in his pale face.

“I’ll take you,” Helsinki says, finally unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

Berlin nods sharply and Nairobi squeezes Helsinki’s hand before he steps over Gandia and leads Berlin down the staircase.

Neither of them speak on their way to the office and Helsinki thinks that it feels like a funeral procession, Berlin and him out front, the others far behind them. They reach the office and Helsinki opens the door, allowing Berlin to step in first.

Absurdly, a part of Helsinki expects Palermo to be sitting up on the sofa, smiling and bitching about having been left out of the action. Of course he isn’t. Reality once again comes crashing down on Helsinki as he sees Palermo, lying motionless on the sofa they left him on.

Berlin is striding across the room in seconds, his hands on Palermo’s face, fingers moving to his neck as if feeling for a pulse. He lowers his head onto Palermo’s chest, a strange keening noise making its way out of his mouth and Helsinki has never seen Berlin like this, but his own heart aches so much he doesn’t know how to comfort anyone else, let alone a man he'd always thought emotionless.

“He loved you,” he eventually says. He doesn’t know if it’ll help, a part of him doesn’t want it to, wants Berlin to think about the man he left behind, but he says it anyway. “I loved him, but he loved you. Everyone could see it.”

Berlin turns to look at him, his face almost as deathly pale as Palermo’s, eyes dark and full of the pain Helsinki feels within himself.

“My only regret,” Berlin rasps. “Leaving him. Out of everything I’ve done, everyone I’ve hurt. Leaving him to do the mint heist is my only regret.”

“Where have you been?” Helsinki asks.

“Prison. The police kept me alive to interrogate me. I guess somehow Sergio found out,” Berlin says, his voice emotionless, monotone, as if spending two years at the mercy of the Spanish government are nothing. “Did… did Sergio tell you guys I was coming? Did Martín know I was coming back to him?”

Helsinki shakes his head and Berlin turns away again. Helsinki watches as he presses a kiss to Martín’s unmoving lips and then gets to his feet, anger etched into the lines of his face, held in the tension of every one of his muscles.

“How?” Berlin asks. When Helsinki doesn’t speak, he tries again. “Who?”

Helsinki knows telling Berlin now, when his grief is still fresh, will be a death sentence. He no longer cares. “Gandia,” he tells him.

“He’s still alive?” Berlin questions.

“Yes,” Helsinki tells him. “The Professor needed him alive to get you and Lisbon out.”

Berlin sets his jaw. “We’re here now. Gun?”

Helsinki hands his rifle over without question and follows Berlin out of the room.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Helsinki says honestly. “Maybe back with the other hostages. He’s too weak to escape again.”

Berlin follows him again, clever eyes taking in every inch of the building. The bullet holes, the damage from Denver’s grenade. They reach the lobby where Gandia is indeed tied up again, kept well away from the other hostages.

Berlin doesn’t hesitate, striding towards the security guard. Helsinki follows, ignoring Tokyo’s shout and Denver’s swearing. They’re too late anyway. Helsinki sees Gandia’s eyes widen in recognition and then Berlin is aiming the gun, pulling the trigger, and Gandia is riddled with bullets.

He dies as fast as Palermo and when it’s done, the only sound is the hostages shrieking and Tokyo and Denver swearing and Nairobi and Bogotá stumbling into the lobby with alarmed looks on their faces.

“Why didn’t you stop him, Helsinki?” Denver yells as Tokyo wrestles the gun away from an unresisting Berlin.

Helsinki stares numbly at him, unable to come up with an excuse, so he just decides on the truth. “I didn’t want to,” he admits. “He deserved it.”

“Berlin, what were you thinking?” Nairobi asks and if Helsinki were a crueller man, more like Berlin maybe, he’d laugh at her confusion.

“He took him from me,” Berlin says flatly. “He took him from me and he took him from Helsinki and he took him from Sergio and he took him from the gang and he took him from the world which never really deserved him in the first place. So I took his miserable, worthless life and if I could do it a hundred times over, it still wouldn’t be enough.”

His voice is cold, sharp, and underneath it all Helsinki can hear his all-consuming grief.

“I’m going to have to tell the Professor,” Tokyo says and Berlin smiles, all teeth with no true mirth or warmth.

“Go ahead. Tell my brother what I did and remind him of what he’s done. Because I told him five years ago that Gandia needed to die and he pussyfooted about and now Martín is dead. And I don’t give a fuck about this gang, about this plan, about any of it anymore. Tell Sergio that all I care about is burying Martín in a golden casket fit for a god and watching the world around me burn until every single person feels what I feel right now, understood, Tokyo?” Berlin asks venomously and there are unrepentant tears in his eyes as he stares Tokyo down.

She doesn’t say anything, speechless for maybe the first time since Helsinki has known her and Berlin turns on his heel and disappears out of the lobby.

Helsinki watches him go and knows that even though he will never be as eloquent as Berlin, he will also never have the rage and hatred that drives him. He stumbles over to the stairs and sits on the lower steps, staring blankly at the spot where he saw Palermo die.

He doesn’t move when Nairobi joins him, resting her head on his shoulder.

“I know he loved Berlin,” she says quietly. “But I think he loved you too, in his own way.”

Helsinki nods. “I know. I’ve always seen him for who he is. And it’s not the person he wanted us all to see.”

“I love you, Helsi,” Nairobi says quietly and he knows it’s not like the last time she said it, when she was trying to prove a point to Palermo. “One day you’re going to find someone who loves you right.”

“I love you too,” he tells her and hopes that maybe, Palermo has finally found peace.

**Author's Note:**

> uh.... i'm sorry?  
> yell at me here, on tumblr ([@hefellfordean](https://hefellfordean.tumblr.com)) or twitter ([@angstypalermo](https://twitter.com/angstypalermo))


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